Tagged: Google
Facebook makes U-turn over decapitation video clip
By Leo KelionTechnology reporter
Facebook has removed a video clip showing a woman’s decapitation and issued new rules about what can be shared on its site.
The U-turn comes two days after it was revealed the firm had dropped a ban on clips showing extreme violence.
The BBC understands that Facebook did this in July after issuing new guidance to staff, but did not think the public would be interested to know.
The British prime minister has accused the firm of being “irresponsible”.
Facebook’s own safety advisers have also voiced concerns.
The US firm now says it will still allow some graphic content but will take a more comprehensive look at its context.
This time Facebook outlined its revised policy in a press release.
“First, when we review content that is reported to us, we will take a more holistic look at the context surrounding a violent image or video, and will remove content that celebrates violence,” it said.
A Facebook page that hosted a decapitation video now says it is unavailable
“Second, we will consider whether the person posting the content is sharing it responsibly, such as accompanying the video or image with a warning and sharing it with an age-appropriate audience.
“Based on these enhanced standards, we have re-examined recent reports of graphic content and have concluded that this content improperly and irresponsibly glorifies violence. For this reason, we have removed it.”
At time of writing other decapitation videos could still be found on the site without warning messages.
‘Community standard’
The announcement follows a series of flip-flops by the company.
On May 1, when questioned about death clips being shared on the site, the firm told the BBC that its users had the right to depict the “world in which we live”.
However, less than two hours after the BBC published an interview with one of the firm’s safety advisers – who raised concerns about the harm this could cause teenagers – it announced a change of tack.
“We will remove instances of these videos that are reported to us while we evaluate our policy and approach to this type of content,” it declared.
The company promised at the time to announce its decision when the review was completed.
But at the start of this week the BBC was contacted by one of the social network’s members who had complained about a clip uploaded on 16 October, which the company was refusing to take down.
“The video shows a woman having her head cut off by a man in a mask,” the user wrote.
“She is alive when this happens. Looking at the comments a load of people have reported this to Facebook and had the same reply.”
An Australian police force was among those who had complained. It said it had been told by Facebook’s moderators that the video “did not violate our community standard on graphic violence”.
When questioned on Monday, a spokeswoman for Facebook confirmed that the ban had indeed been dropped and that the company had introduced a new rule: such material could be posted and shared on the site so long as the original post did not celebrate or encourage the actions depicted.
This prompted David Cameron to tweet on Tuesday: “It’s irresponsible of Facebook to post beheading videos, especially without a warning. They must explain their actions to worried parents.”
Stephen Balkam, the chief executive of the Family Online Safety Institute (Fosi) charity – who sits on the network’s Safety Advisory Board – said he was “unhappy” at the move, which he had not been told about in advance.
Many of the site’s users also questioned why it allowed such extreme footage but banned images and videos showing a woman’s “fully exposed breast”.
Facebook subsequently added an alert to the video, replacing the banner image with the words: “Warning! This video contains extremely graphic content and may be upsetting.”
But last night it changed its policy again, and visitors to the page are now told: “This content is currently unavailable.”
In response Mr Cameron tweeted: “I’m pleased Facebook has changed its approach on beheading videos. The test is now to ensure their policy is robust in protecting children.”
Mr Balkam also welcomed the move.
“The Family Online Safety Institute is encouraged by the changes that Facebook announced today to the posting of graphic or disturbing material,” he said in a statement.
“In order to protect young people in particular, it is imperative that Facebook – and all other social media sites – have in place a review process for this type of material and provide warnings where appropriate.”
London-based Childnet International, another of Facebook’s safety advisers, said it still wanted more information.
“If they’ve taken it down I welcome that,” said the charity’s chief executive Will Gardner told the BBC.
“But I want to find out more and look into this further.”
Age limits
Google’s rival Google+ social network has more restrictive guidelines on graphic content: “Do not distribute depictions of graphic or gratuitous violence,” it states.
There are videos on its YouTube service in which people discuss beheadings and provide links to explicit footage, but the firm has removed videos showing the act of murder from its own site.
“While YouTube’s guidelines generally prohibit graphic or violent content, we make exceptions for material with documentary, or news value,” a spokesman added.
“In cases where a video is not suitable for all viewers, we’re careful to apply warnings and age-restrictions to safeguard people using our site.”
Related articles
- PM calls Facebook irresponsible for allowing beheading clips (globalclarity.wordpress.com)
- Facebook makes U-turn over decapitation video clip (imenroll.wordpress.com)
‘Dutch sandwich’ grows as Google shifts €8.8bn to Bermuda
The Financial Times
By Vanessa Houlder
October 10, 2013 7:09 pm
Google funnelled €8.8bn of royalty payments to Bermuda last year, a quarter more than in 2011, underlining the rapid expansion of a strategy that has saved the US internet group billions of dollars in tax.
By routing royalty payments to Bermuda, Google reduces its overseas tax rate to about 5 per cent, less than half the rate in already low-tax Ireland, where it books most of its international sales.
High quality global journalism requires investment. Please share this article with others using the link below, do not cut & paste the article. See our Ts&Cs and Copyright Policy for more detail. Email ftsales.support@ft.com to buy additional rights. http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/89acc832-31cc-11e3-a16d-00144feab7de.html#ixzz2hP4wWbw0
The figures were revealed in the latest filings by one of Google’s Dutch subsidiaries, and means that royalty payments made to Bermuda – where the company holds its non-US intellectual property – have doubled over the past three years. This increase reflects the rapid growth of Google’s global business.
The company has been at the centre of the international controversy over corporate tax avoidance because it earns “substantially all” its foreign income in Ireland and pays relatively little tax in the countries where its customers are based.
It has also faced criticism for its use of a “double Irish” structure that exploits differences between the US and Irish tax codes to move the profits from Ireland to Bermuda. It also routes the profits through the Netherlands to avoid withholding taxes, using a structure known as a “Dutch sandwich”. Google declined to comment.
Revelations about Google’s tax planning have stoked widespread public anger, prompting politicians to launch an international crackdown on corporate profit shifting. The problems raised by digital companies is one of the central issues being addressed by the initiative launched by the G20 group of leading economies this summer.
In principle, multinationals such as Google that pay relatively little tax overseas will face big bills in the US when they bring their earnings back to the US. But Google has not provided for extra US tax because it intends to permanently reinvest $33bn of offshore profits outside the US.
The new figures come from the accounts of Google Netherlands Holdings, which represents the “Dutch sandwich” part of the tax structure. It received €8.6bn in royalties from Google Ireland Ltd and €232.8m in royalties from Google’s Singapore operation. All but €10.4m of this was paid out to Google Ireland Holdings, a company that is incorporated in Ireland but controlled in Bermuda.
Differences between the Irish and US tax codes mean that this dual-resident company is viewed as Irish for US tax purposes but Bermudan for Irish purposes. It acquired much of Google’s intellectual property in 2003, which it licensed to Google Ireland Ltd, a Dublin-based business that is at the heart of its global operation. The business, which employed 2,199 people last year, paid €17m in Irish corporation tax, having reported pre-tax profits of €153.9 on turnover of €15.5bn.
Google’s UK operation, which provides marketing services to the Irish affiliate, paid £11.5m in corporate tax in 2012, nearly double the bill for 2011 but far less than many MPs and other critics believe it should have paid. The UK is Google’s second-biggest market, responsible for almost 10 per cent of its sales, or almost $4.9bn last year.
In a stormy parliamentary hearing earlier this year, Margaret Hodge, chair of the Public Accounts Committee denounced Google as “evil” and accused it of “devious, calculating and unethical” behaviour by booking sales in Ireland. But Google said this was an unfair representation of the way it operated in which sales activity took place in Britain but only the Irish business had the right to close the transaction.
Related articles
- Google pays €17m tax on €15.5bn revenue (irishtimes.com)
- Google: the abuse goes on (taxresearch.org.uk)
- Google paid £12M in tax to British coffers in 2012, despite £3B UK revenue (zdnet.com)
NSA masqueraded as Google to spy on web users – report
By RT News
Published time: September 13, 2013 09:37
The NSA used ‘man in the middle’ hack attacks to impersonate Google and fool web users, leaks have revealed. The technique circumvents encryption by redirecting users to a copycat site which relays all the data entered to NSA data banks.
Brazilian television network Globo News released a report based on classified data divulged by former CIA worker Edward Snowden on Sunday. The report itself blew the whistle on US government spying on Brazilian oil giant Petrobras, but hidden in amongst the data was information the NSA had impersonated Google to get its hands on user data.
Globo TV showed slides from a 2012 NSA presentation explaining how the organization intercepts data and re-routes it to NSA central. One of the convert techniques the NSA uses to do this is a ‘man in the middle’ (MITM) hack attack.
This particular method of intercepting internet communications is quite common among expert hackers as it avoids having to break through encryption. Essentially, NSA operatives log into a router used by an internet service provider and divert ‘target traffic’ to a copycat MITM site, whereupon all the data entered is relayed to the NSA. The data released by Edward Snowden and reported on by Globo News suggests the NSA carried out these attacks disguised as Google.
When the news broke about the NSA gathering information through internet browsers, tech giants such as Google and Yahoo denied complicity, maintaining they only handover data if a formal request is issued by the government.
“As for recent reports that the US government has found ways to circumvent our security systems, we have no evidence of any such thing ever occurring. We provide our user data to governments only in accordance with the law,” said Google spokesperson Jay Nancarrow to news site Mother Jones.
Google, along with Microsoft, Facebook and Yahoo, has filed a lawsuit against the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISA) to allow them to make public all the data requests made by the NSA.
“Given the important public policy issues at stake, we have also asked the court to hold its hearing in open rather than behind closed doors. It’s time for more transparency,” Google’s director of law enforcement and information security, Richard Salgado, and the director of public policy and government affairs, Pablo Chavez, wrote in a blog post on Monday.
The tech giants implicated in NSA’s global spying program have denied criticism that they could have done more to resist NSA spying. Marissa Mayer, CEO of Yahoo, claimed that speaking out about the NSA’s activities would have amounted to ‘treason’ at a press conference in San Francisco on Wednesday.
In Yahoo’s defense, she argued that the company had been very skeptical of the NSA’s requests to disclose user data and had resisted whenever possible. Mayer concluded that it was more realistic to work within the system,” rather than fight against it.
Related articles
- NSA Disguised Itself as GOOGLE to Spy… (news.cnet.com)
- Reports: NSA Reroutes People To Fake Google Website To Spy On Them (patdollard.com)
- The NSA Disguises Itself as Google to Spy (gizmodo.com)
Thai villagers hold Google Street View worker hostage after accusing him of being a government spy
By Becky Evans and Ap Reporter
PUBLISHED:17:02, 15 August 2013| UPDATED:08:30, 16 August 2013
Villagers in Thailand held a Google Street View worker after suspecting he was a government spy.
About 20 residents in the remote Sa-eab village in Phrae province blocked the marked Google car on Tuesday after becoming convinced the worker was surveying for an unwanted dam project.
The Google worker, named as Deeprom Phongphon, was only believed after swearing in a Buddhist temple that he did not work for the government.
The Google Street View worker was surrounded by villagers as he drove through Sa-eab, in Phrae Provine. Above, the street car in action in the UK
The car aroused suspicion as it toured the streets of the rural village with its large camera attached to the roof.
The Manager newspaper reported that the villagers took the vehicle’s driver to a local office to quiz him, then to a temple where they made him swear on a statue of Buddha that he was not working for the dam project.
‘The villagers were definitely not happy. The car looked very strange and had something on the top – there was also all kinds of equipment inside the car,’ Wichai Ruksapon, 64, told AFP.
Google’s regional communications manager Taj Meadows said yesterday that the company was aware of the incident.
The Prachatai news website said the villagers released the driver and later apologized to him and to Google.
Sa-eab village, 385 miles north of Bangkok, is known for its long-running dam protests by villagers and environmental groups.
‘(We) apologize to the official, to Google, as well as to the Thai people throughout the nation and to the citizens of the world,’ the villagers’ representatives wrote.
The Google worker was only let go when he swore in front of a statue of Buddha at a local temple
They explained that they were ‘extremely worried and there had been so many repeated cases that convinced the villagers to believe someone was trying to survey the area in disguise.’
Google Street View has run into problems in some other countries where there are concerns it captures too much information that should be private.
The project’s technology also scoops up Wi-Fi radio signals, and Britain’s data regulator in June ordered the company to delete personal data it gathered that way, or face a contempt of court action.
‘Embarking on new projects, we sometimes encounter unexpected challenges, and Street View has been no exception,’ Google’s Meadows said in an email, adding that ‘Street View abides by Thailand’s local laws, and only features imagery taken on public property.’
The internet giant project takes photographs to accompany its Google Earth map program.
In 2011, the Tourism Authority of Thailand partnered with Google Thailand to launch a tourism promotion initiative involving images of streets and top attractions in the country’s major cities.
Thailand was the world’s 35th country to have Street View imagery available.
Related articles
- Google Street View car hits an angry roadblock in Thailand (mercurynews.com)
- Thai villagers make citizens’ arrest of Google Street View driver (theguardian.com)
- Thai villagers apologize for blocking Google car (miamiherald.com)
- Google Street View Driver Detained by Thai Villagers, Made to Swear Benevolence on Buddha Statue (webpronews.com)
Global Clarity 